Tom’s Games

In Which We Find Out What Tom Has Done Before And Stuff

A lot of people write me, wanting to know how to get into the games industry. Many of them have never made a game. That’s why I advise making a bunch of little games yourself, so you can screw up in private, until you really get the idea, then show other people your stuff. The director Robert Rodriguez says in his book, Rebel Without A Crew, that everyone has about ten bad films in them. He suggests making those, then with all that experience, you can show people stuff that shows more maturity and understanding. This goes for games, too. Look all this junk I did from June 9th, 1980, when I got my Apple II+, to September 1987, when I went to work for Softdisk. These aren’t all the games, but a lot of them. And it doesn’t include utilities and applications and stuff. (I reprogrammed a few of them for Softdisk later, you’ll notice.)

GAME

TYPE

COMMENTS

Tank

Arcade/sim

BASIC. Sad little type in the angle, it draw the dots of the arc for the cannonball, and you try to hit the other tank.

Murderer

Adventure

BASIC. Walk around a town grid looking for the murderer. If you find his square, you see a horrible stick figure with meanie eyebrows.

Gold Quest

Adventure

BASIC. Actual locations to find items and dig for gold!

Xenon I – IV Adventures

Adventure

BASIC. After writing real adventures, it was fun to write a huge adventure made up of leading descriptions that got you to type the next obvious thing to do or look at, which led to the next IF statement. They were all in a big loop, so if you typed GO STARSHIP, you’d jump forward to that part of the game. Silly but fun to make because they were so incredibly epic with no effort.

Deserted Island

Adventure

Fun little adventure that I don’t remember at all.

Monkey Adventure

Adventure

Not quite the spectacle of fun that Monkey Island was, but it was fun to get him to do stuff by taunting him with banana goodies.

Ed’s Superspy Course

Adventure

BASIC. He’s Ed. He’s got a superspy course! Collect all the treasures on the spy testing grounds… Published on Softdisk as my first assembly language adventure.

Aztec Temple

Adventure

My mom’s favorite, published later on Softdisk. It was pretty good. Some rather clever puzzles.

Box Canyon

Adventure

Fun little adventure. No great shakes.

Rescue on Alka

Adventure

Rescue the princess from the Castle Selzer. Get it?

Starcruiser

Adventure

On a bet, I wrote this in two hours. It was pretty cool for two hours. Escape the doomed starship!

Submarine

Adventure

Some cool puzzles in this baby. Sliding down a pipe on a belt and junk.

Cyclo

Adventure

First of a set of nine adventures: The Ultimate Adventure. Never made the other eight. Hee.

The Last Hope

Adventure

Sci-fantasy game with you trying to save the life-source of a planet from dying….

Shipwreck

Adventure

Pretty dang tough adventure.

Lighthouse

Adventure

Cool puzzles with timed tides and stuff.

Secret Evil Petrified Desert

Adventure

Huge and epic, about alien ships hidden inside petrified trees, which you find after, you know, crossing a desert. Really cool, and so big that when I tried to compile it with a BASIC compiler, it wouldn’t fit in memory!

Monolith

Adventure

Really tough adventure that was pretty spooky too.

Amusement Park

Adventure

Funny, cool adventure that I later redid for Softdisk. Some rather hilarious parts.

Primero Dinero

Simulation

FINALLY, I get off the adventure kick with… a sim that plays like an adventure. History class simulation of managing your supplies when stranded on an island.

Dungeon

Role-playing

Sort of a text adventure with fights in the middle of it. Eamonish, I guess. Why no graphics since Murderer?

Gunner

Shoot-’em-up

Shape tables Shooter. Basically, you’re a tail gunner. One of the creatures was “Space Mite”. Followed by a bunch of too-slow, flashy, awful arcade games that shouldn’t have ever been done in BASIC by a rational person. But this one was okay.

Zapper

Shoot-’em-up

Shouldn’t have been done in BASIC by a rational person.

Superzot

Shoot-’em-up

Shouldn’t have been done in BASIC by a rational person.

Dexicon

Shoot-’em-up

Shouldn’t have been done in BASIC by a rational person.

Space Peepers

Shoot-’em-up

Cool idea where little Kilroys pop out of moon craters. Saw the game game later on a console system. Ah well. Good intro anim for flash.

Madvoober

Shoot-’em-up

Basically this is Mad Bomber, but with non-page flipped shapes that flashed (voobed) really annoyingly.

Mass Poopage

Shoot-’em-up

You shoot a bird that is pooping massively above you. Of course, the poop is utterly lethal.

Monkey

Platform

Imagine Donkey Kong Junior on two poles, with stuff coming down the screen that he’s got to avoid. Get to the top of the screen! Yes!

Musical Snowbound

Maze

A version of Pacman I wrote quickly for my sister, because she was bad at games–this one had no ghosts, which made it considerable easier.

Walk Into the Dot

Action/Puzzle

Kind of a cool simple game idea that actually got published on Softdisk later as a joke. First level: one bad dot, one good dot. Walk into the good dot. Second level: two bad dots. And on. After the thirty-sixth level, it is almost impossible. If you run into a bad dot, you go back one level. The dots are random, so you can get screwed. Strangely fun, though. Well, to me, anyway.

Zap

Shoot-’em-up

Such a forgettable game, I forgot it.

Jumpy

Platform

I’m sure this had to do with jumping…

Horse Race

Race

Bet on one of four horses and they race! Kept track of historical scores.

Slot Machine

Casino

Pull the lever. Wow!

LGADV Adventure

Adventure

Sad lo-res graphics for rooms, but at least they were graphics!

LGADV2: Cheese Factory Adventure

Adventure

Not quite so sad, as there’s cheese in it. And duct-crawling-through!

The Silver Cow

Adventure

Hi-res tiles Ultima-style game with no Ultima style depth. An amusing voice-digitized “MOO!” at the start, on an Apple ][!

Alphabetics

Educational

Bring the two matching letters to the momma rabbit. The controls (four arrows and space bar) we way above the heads of the super-young kids it was designed for. A lesson I learned from my teacher friend Mr. K.

Death Ships From the Ninth Galaxy

Shoot-’em-up

Joke game: three HUGE ships at the top of the screen don’t fire, so you can just blow them up. But avoid the falling pilot’s corpse!

Korp

Shoot-’em-up

More dang disposable shooters.

Spire City

Shoot-’em-up

Disposable shooter with enemies on a spiral path. Wow.

Here Comes the Grunge

Educational

Character generator (later published at Word Castle) Cool hangman game without the gruesome corpse thingy.

Changemaker

Educational

Helped kids learn to make change with Eddie and his piggy bank! Used by learning-disabled kids.

Then I went to work at Softdisk. I improved submitted programs for a long time, as well as making my own. Here are most of them (these are just the games, not the apps like What A Poster! and so on):

GAME

YEAR

COMMENTS

Aztec Temple

1988

They bought it from me… for a hundred dollars!

Ed’s Superspy Course

1988

Changemaker

1988

Walk Into the Dot

1988

The Silver Cow

1988

Amusement Park

1989

Word Castle

1989

Formerly Here Comes the Grunge

In Search of the Golden Cheese

1989

The stunning sequel to The Silver Cow. Basically a maze.

Duck Boop

1989

First true event-driven shooter I made. A demo of the block-shape routines we provided on the disk.

Alfredo’s Stupendous Surprise

1989

Romero and I adding a choose-your-path version of the constantly mutilated, stick-figure mascot of Softdisk. We worked hard to fit this in 128K. We finished with EIGHT BYTES of memory left!

Recollect Trek

1989

Trivia game, as well as the next one.

Recollect The Beatles

1989

Pun’s Peak

1989

Little adventure where the solutions are HIDEOUS puns.

Ark Shadows

1989

Cool levels for Arkanoid GS

Legend of the Star Axe

1990

Fun shooter with silly enemies like the Blehs and fleets of 57 Chevys. Joe Siegler got to level 174 of this game!

Catacomb

1990

Cool arcade game done with Carmack. Did levels and graphics.

Double Dangerous Dave

1990

(Romero’s game–I just did the double hi-res graphics.)

Here also are some programs that I spiffed up so much from the original, they are countable as games I worked on:

GAME

YEAR

COMMENTS

The Seven Keys

1987

Basically, Monopoly.

Anagram Challenge

1988

Word fun.

Loose Change

1988

Changemaker without Eddie and the piggy bank.

Magic Boxes

1989

Puzzle that Romero later ported to the PC… in TEXT MODE!

Now on the PC side (these are in the id anthology)… 1990 was a busy year!

GAME

YEAR

COMMENTS

Catacomb

1990

2D Magician action.

Dangerous Dave

1990

Mario… sorta.

Catacomb II

1990

2D Magician action with more colors!

Slordax

1990

A fan of Slordax wrote me last week. LAST WEEK! I mean, get a console!

Shadow Knights

1990

I did like a few levels.

Rescue Rover!

1990

I really love the puzzle elements in the Rescue Rovers. (That’s why I borrowed some of the puzzle elements for Hyperspace Delivery Boy!) Level 29 of Rescue Rover! is one of the hardest puzzles in any game ever. Heh heh heh.

Dangerous Dave in the Haunted Mansion

1990

The reloading-your-shotgun mechanic was awesome and tension-producing… especially during boss battles!

Keen Dreams

1990

Shouldn’t have made this Keen — now some dude in Louisiana has rights to this episode.

Rescue Rover II

1990

More puzzle insanity. Never did finish the trilogy… nor ever record the theme song I made up!

Hovertank One

1990

3D game! But with color-mapped walls.

Catacomb 3-D

1990

This is the first 3D fast-action FPS EVER. Too bad it was in EGA and like four people saw it.

Commander Keen in… “Invasion of the Vorticons”

1990

I love Keen. Keen is basically me at age eight. The Green Bay Packer helmet, the red Converse sneakers, the dreams of space… If I ever got the rights again, I’d make Keen 3D in a heartbeat.

Commander Keen in… “Goodbye, Galaxy!”

1991

Keen 4 introduced the Dopefish, who now has a bizarre, cult-like following, and has had a cameo in many games. Keen 5 is Romero’s favorite Keen.

Commander Keen in… “Aliens Ate My Baby Sitter!”

1991

Should never have split up the trilogy and made a commercial version. Ah well.

Wolfenstein 3D

1992

I remember Romero playing it while we were working on it in Madison, Wisconsin, and saying, “There’s NOTHING like this!”

Spear of Destiny

1992

I love the surprise end level. Hee.

DOOM

1993

Awesome game that I was totally unhappy working on, simply because the things I am best at aren’t in the game: characters, puzzle elements, story, content. It’s just a raw shooter, which is cool, but not really what I enjoy doing. I had a story, characters with different abilities, and brief cinematic pictures at the start and end. I felt we were getting way too minimalistic in player reward, and wanted a reason for the person to go through the levels, rather than a switch. We parted ways, which really was for the best. (What levels did Tom do? Level 1-4, first half of 1-8, 2-1, 2-2, 2-3, 2-4, 2-7, 3-3, and 3-7. Some of them were subsequently retextured to be episode-appropriate and stuff, and the new monsters were added. It was really cool that a LucasArts guy said the crate stuff in Jedi Knight was an homage to the crate maze, 2-2, in DOOM. I’m honored. Now, if I can just beat Jerec before he goes up the tube again…. Also, a level of mine, level 10, wound up in DOOM 2, but I don’t count that as “a game I worked on”, so…)

Duke Nukem II

1993

Did the story, designed the bosses, drew the bonus items, and some sprites and tiles.

Rise of the Triad

1994

A bunch of innovations (rocket-jumping, sorted frags, environment changing, missile cam, parental password, and on and on, but lost in an old-style engine.

Extreme Rise of the Triad

1995

Level pack. Basically a waste of a few months. But some clever level bits.

Terminal Velocity

1995

Co-produced this one.

(I did the story for Duke Nukem 3D, but that was an after-the-fact thing. I also helped come up with TripBombs. Didn’t work on the game, though. And, of course, I was on the first year of Prey, but needed to make the game I wanted to make, and thus…ION Storm. Hope Prey rocks. Someday. Well, at least I got a Prey mug.)

Also, I started a bunch of games that I never finished, but always wanted to. Never enough time. Sigh. Here’s a list!

BEFORE SOFTDISK

GAME

TYPE

COMMENTS

Poids

Shoot-’em-up

Turned into Legend of the Star Axe on the GS. An homage to Sneakers by Mark Turmell. The slogan: “They’re too cute to shoot!”

The Ultimate Adventure

Adventure

Gfx/text Finished Cyclo, the first one, but the other eight are in Limbo.

Fate of the Firedame

Adventure

You’re on a starship, stuffed in a missile tube, and it’s destroyed and in a decaying orbit. Have fun!

Castle Wolfenstine(sic)

Action

Text-based version of Castle Wolfenstein. Spelled differently to avoid prosecution!

Slayquest

RPG

My version of the ancient Dragon’s Eye crossed with Wizardry.

Starstrike

Shoot-’em-up

Finally a shoot-’em-up in assembly! Nope.

SOFTDISK

GAME

TYPE

COMMENTS

Rice Farmer

Simulation

Rice farming. Woo!

Lizardly

RPG

Wizardry parody.

Candy Quest

Action adventure

And never done.

Rescue Rover IIe

Action

I originally designed it on the Apple II. Inspired by Adventures of Lolo.

No Man’s LAN

Arcade on network

Would have been an AppleTalked multiplayer game

Dangerous Dave GS

Platform

Port of Romero’s game, did editor, gfx, but stopped

Disc World

Platform

Like Q-Bert

Scary Bizness

Platform

Halloween-themed platformed in Double Hi-res.

Secret of the Obelisk

Adventure

One of the few I didn’t finish

Run ‘n’ Jump

Platform

Run as stuff scrolls by you that you must jump over.

Starstrike

Shoot-’em-up

Finally a shoot-’em-up in assembly! Nope.

ID GAMES

GAME

TYPE

COMMENTS

Penultima III

RPG

Carmack and I doing a real RPG, though it was a joke, too.

Wac-man

Maze action

We started this as an example for a developer seminar. Never finished it off.

Save Spot!

Puzzle action

Rescue Rover! but we would own the IP.

IGOTABAT.EXE

Action

Funny for brutality and that it fit in IBM’s old 8-character filename restriction.

Spheres of Influence

Puzzle Action

Combing spheres to make different things.

Commander Keen in… “The Universe is Toast!”

Platform

Sigh….

Okay, back to games I actually got AROUND to making or helping to make!

ION STORM GAMES

GAME

TYPE

COMMENTS

Anachronox

Role-playing

I loved making this game, even though the company struggles were insane. The guys that stuck it out were bonded in ways that no one else will understand. Likely by body funk.

Deus Ex

Action RPG

I voiced Walton Simons, and some other folks.

MONKEYSTONE GAMES

GAME

TYPE

COMMENTS

Hyperspace Delivery Boy!

Action puzzle

A fun puzzle adventure on the Pocket PC, then PC, then Gameboy Advance. Now being ported to Linux!

Jewel & Jim

Action puzzle

On BREW platform.

Gold Digger

Action puzzle

On BREW platform

Congo Cube

Action puzzle

On PC and elsewhere…

MIDWAY GAMES

At Midway, I was Creative Director over Third Party Products. It was a cool place with a great boss, Steve Crane. I commented on a lot of projects, did a Design Database to try to unite the five studios, and other stuff. Here’s two of the games I looked at a lot.

GAME

TYPE

COMMENTS

Narc

Action

My first task was to comment and suggest changes on this controversial title. A trip to Scotland! The checkered development history meant they never really got to do virtually any of my suggestions, but well, stuff happens. Frustrating for them, frustrating for me. Ah well.

Area 51

Action

This is a great game. Apart from various milestone commentaries, I suggested a scanner to unite their Lore with the character, to make you feel you aren’t just another guy with a gun. Also, jumping bean grenades, but they never got quite erratic enough to make them scary, but there you go. They did a great job on this game. Props to Zach, Justin, Jim, Daryl, and the whole team. Fun! It was cool meeting David Duchovny and Marilyn Manson. If a bit surreal.

KingsIsle Entertainment

GAME

TYPE

COMMENTS

Wizard Blox

Match 3

Simple, free Match-3 on iOS to complement Wizard 101

LOOT DROP

Social games and more!

GAME

TYPE

COMMENTS

Pettington Park

Social

It’s cats vs. dogs in weekly competitions — which side are you on? Fun social game with minigames, quirky humor

PlayFirst Studio at Glu Mobile

Mobile free-to-play games!

GAME

TYPE

COMMENTS

Deep Sea Deli

Drag match-3

Came in after this game started, helped it, but the core was flawed. Cute art though!

Diner Dash Rush

Action time-management

Also joined this late, made it as cool as possible, but flawed core, not tons of replayability.

Diner Dash (2014)

Time management

Inherited this, redesigned it a good bit, pretty fun game.

Cooking Dash 2016

Time management

Started this from scratch, broke apart and reassembled the core of what Cooking Dash is, got player in flow state, this is fun AND addictive. The team and I did this really well. Fun, evolving gameplay!

And we’ve just announced a new DASH game with Gordon Ramsay! More soon…

This list may be inaccurate, but like the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, where it is inaccurate, it is at least DEFINITIVELY inaccurate. :^)

Hey Tom ! Since I can’t find no massage board nor direct Email, I’ll just ask you here 🙂
What legal issues prevent you from doing another Keen game, or at least develope a new Commander Keen game which will be totally different but still have the same familiar characters ?

And for the other issues I tried to reach you about – I’m working on a Commander Keen comic book (something I started doing in crude guidelines back when I was 12, and found out it’s gonna be cool doing it right now when I’m 25 and, almost finishing my degree) – How can I get the right to use the many (or some of the) characters in the game series, If I’m not planning to do it for money, just for to publish it for free on the internet ?

Thanks for Anachronox – one of the best games I ever played (on my shelf right there with System Shock, Deus Ex, May Payne and Dungeon Master)
Although the ending was quite unfair – in the view that there will be no part two – sniff
…and that Dopefish is haunting me (saw it last in a game by russian or polish developers 🙂

So, I’ve had a nagging question bouncing around my head for a while that I think would be great if you could answer for me.

I’ve had what I thought was an original idea for a few years that I’ve wanted to implement in a game. It involved jumping through a portal type of teleporter. A seamless doorway integrated into the gameplay… exactly like what can be found in Prey and Portals now. Naturally when I fired up these games to check out the technology I was excited to see, what I thought was an original idea, had been executed so well in a commercial game.
I was curious to know if the idea for the portal technology was in the Prey concept from the beginning. Since Prey (all the way back Prey) had been in production far longer than my idea had been, I was wondering if my idea was ever original at all.

I spent hours and hours with Anachronix just running around Sender station. It felt like a second home. Which I guess is kind of a good thing since you’re working on an mmo now. I hope you’ll capture the same degree of wonder and detail I felt existed in Anachronox. But this time interactive and with lots of real people. Oooh this is going to be so great.
Btw will you be doing any voice acting? I sure hope so, you have a knack for voice stuff. Walton Simons still haunts my dreams 😉

Well thanks. That’s pretty much what I wanted to know. I think it’s interesting that every new concept is based on old ones, yet somehow they can be refreshing every time they’re re-visited with a new angle.

I’ve been reading Masters of Doom recently, it’s been cool putting faces and personality behind the games I love to play and dissect. I grew up on the Keen games, so I’ve been a fan of your style of goofiness for a long time… whether I knew who you were or not. 🙂 I’m looking forward to Wizard 101.

I owe you much, much thanks for your work with Rise of the Triad. I still remember picking it up in the store in ’94 or so, it instantly became my top favorite- I’m still playing it after all these years (still using the heck out of Ted5 as well!) Sure, there are some great new games out there, but there’s just something special about those old Apogee and ID games that you don’t really see anymore.
Thanks for the great memories, and best of luck to you in your future projects!

Wow, thanks for the tip.
There are still some nasty tricks which I haven’t figured out…
Sorry 4 the dumb question, but what did You do in the Anachronox? The storyline, the outlook, the universe, the dialogs, programming, level decorations, or You imagined ALL of that stuff, and simply [:))] made other guys to “materialize it”?

Now ’bout Deus Ex. Man! This is A GAME. As Murk said he was in Sunder station, I say that I WAS JC )) Hell. I am JC! It is a game #1 for me. Along with the Unreal ). Surely now as I have Anachronox, it’ll be the third #1 game for me LOL.
Though the Invisible war lacked some shooting, it had a great storyline too. But I dont care ’bout shooting ’cause my videocard hardly permitted me to run it under 800*600 ).
You know, when I first watched the “Equilibrium”, and heard Chris Bale talsking, I hopped up “WOW, thats the guy who was Walton Simons in DX!!!”. But I suddenly realized that it was “some” )) Tom guy. I thought “Hmm…I could’ve sworn…”
And than came the Area 51, and then – Anachronox. When I was watching the credits after first finish I saw that Tom guy again ). Than I thought – Wow, this guy makes amazing things, but than I thought – it’s a pitty, but the life tends to NOT give us the NEXT episodes of the Amazing One’s [no Anachronox 2, no Freelancer 2, no Undying 2, thanks Life for the DX2 though].
After that I decide to learn a bit more ’bout such a MAN who gave me ‘nox, Simons, ‘n’ Area 51, and through Wiki – here I am)
A deep bow to You again!
P.S. There’s a cool photo on Wiki with You, Romero and Warren Spector. Now it’ll be on my desktop till Armageddon comes. Well, or till Milla Jovovich has a nice wallpaper 😀

I was Project Lead and Lead Designer, so I came up with the universe, the characters, the concept of the places, the story, then everyone took their pieces and ran with it. Jake did brilliant direction, Richie wrote an amazing script and brought amazing life and depth to the story I had, plus the both of them came up with amazing gameplay and design throughout. Squirrel, Joey, and the programmers did amazing work all over the place, and Lee and all the artists made the world come alive with great art. I did program Bugaboo, OX, that ghost game, and the random game names in Hephaestus.

Heh, yeah, that’s my evil character voice, heh.

Thanks for all the kind comments. If you’re a Milla fan, she has an interview in the latest “Interview” magazine.

Thanks for the explanation. Would You mind if I use your photo at http://wolf.nofrag.com/images/tomhall-overgame-02.jpg in my russian version of Wiki article about you? 🙂 ’cause there’s only english one, and I know a lot of your fans from russia who also admires You, so I decided to make a sort of translation from english version )).

Man, I wish there’d been a sequel. Plenty of cool stuff is hinted at in the game files, and in some of the early concept art… places like the Echo Dimension, Rossophis, Magentasse. The Tantasil/Tantasol disaster. Greyscale pirates. The vampire-looking guy. Beasties like the Magentaur, the Azuur and the Urticate…

Hello Tom Hall,
I am a huge fan of Commander Keen. That was my childhood, in a way. I grew up with my dad bringing home floppy disks of shareware titles and that’s how I discovered Keen. I cannot tell you how much I was inspired by the the artwork, music, and story of the series. I have a few questions for you regarding the current state of Keen if it wouldn’t be too much trouble to answer. I’m sure you get this far too much but I haven’t heard any clear answeres to these. Have you tried to deal with id as of late to make a new Keen game? What is their real stance on the rights of Keen? Have you tried and failed before? In this day and age, seeing Keen come to the handhelds, barring the GBC rendition of course, or the download services such as XBLA, PSN, WiiWare, Steam, etc, would seem so much more possible than in the past. I have always been dumbfounded that id has just sit on Keen for so long without anything being done with it. Keen GBC could not have possibly set a precedent. Anyway, I look forward to playing your next game and hope to look forward to a new Keen game some day.

Writing from Poland – I remember when I bought ROTT in April 1995 for 39$ (when average monthly income was about 80$) – this was also my first legit game I bought (before 1995 there were no copyright laws in my country). Money well spent – for this day I have two 486/100 hooked up by direct cable to play ROTT (and Keen sometimes – seriously Robo Red is one of the hardest video game enemies ever created). Even after 15 years ROTT is still fun to play (in both multiplayer and singleplayer – it took me so many years to actually figure how to truly beat El Oscuro). If remake will be ever made I will pay 100$ for it straight (and 200$ for new Keen game) 🙂

Dude! Anachronox kicked ass! I mean, how many genuinely funny games do they make? Basically, zero. One of the party members was an entire planet! How brilliant is that? It also had great characters and drama (poor Fatima… *sniff*) I still call collectible stuff in any game “TACOs” Heh heh heh.

men you have work a lot…
just wanna say thanks for make keen, the dopefish , blabla, the only game i cannot finish is slordax, it was the first computwer game i played back to 1996,97 (i dont remember well) (im 19 years old), i live in chile and there is hard to get games, but i manage to get commander keen games, i see the references in doom and biomenace and i wanted to know about it, and presto y became a fan to the first shot, i read your history and i feel represented, i mean how many people want to be some class of space hero when child? instead of a footbal helm i played with a biker helm(or a paper one), jumping across my house and making my mom angry, haha, im hiperactive, and sometimes i still jumping in any places i am… still making my mon angry XD.

i read defiler post and you right Id should give to you the rights of keen,
the problem is, im also drawing a fanbook of keen, this is a crossover disaster (my brother call it “disaster” instead of crossover when i make some fancomic, because i mix many worlds, triying to fit every one)

-thats it, i hope dont bothering you, im eager to talk about my fan-disaster
but i dont know i hope dont earn hate from keen creator, my drawning teacher encourages me to draw because he says im creative; original, imaginative, things like that, and i like to make my own games, but i dont know how programming, i cannot find a place where learn…
– i hope this long waste of my time dont, make you anger, i wait your next job
-thats it goodbye, see you in the well of whishes BURP!!

Hello Tom. As a kid I really loved commander keen and I have actually played all of the keen games over again this summer. I am really into space adventures and stuff like that as well. As a kid, I remember drawing a lever and switches on the wall (they’re still there) and pretending to be a space hero. Anyway, commander keen is the coolest game ever. Out of the 7 games, I believe Keen5 is the best. Greetings from Estonia, take care. PS: The next game better have those glorious 2D graphics.

we, a team of 10 students studying Game Design in Germany, created a 2D Jump and Run game called “Grounded”.

I presented the game on GDC Europe, Games Com 2009 and on some other events here in Germany. The thing that really made me so proud was that some people just looked at it for 5 seconds and said “Wow, that reminds me of Commander Keen!”.

In my opinion thats the best award given from players that I can imagine, especially because its no Keen Clone. This happened a lot of times and I still don’t know how we achieved this 😉 But as I was the team leader, producer and tech leader, I might have thought about Keen sometimes while creating the game. Oh, and the fact, that its about a little boy who has to save the world might add to the effect 🙂

We also created an English version and we are going to sign in for the German Developers Contest (Newcomer Award). We really would appreciate if some more people would play the game and give us some feedback, maybe even Tom (everybody has his idols, huh?) 😉

You also can watch the trailer, a Making Of and download the game for free, its all linked here:

Heya, people.
Just played an Anachronox Demo, Daikatana and Deus Ex.
My marks:
Anachronox – 8/10, but it’s was just a demo
Daikatana – 8/10 I had no bugs in this game, so I’m bad guy =)
Deus Ex – 9/10, I think, that this game is good, and need to good sequels.

Hey guys, I am proud to tell you that Grounded (Download at http://www.spielegestalter.de ) won the second place of the German Developer Award 2009 (Newcomer Category). We uploaded a new English version with English voiceovers and all the important stuff translated… so you might give it a try.

I remember playing Aztec Temple as a child but could never finish it..is there someplace I can download a copy of the game or at least find a walkthrough so I know what I was missing? LOL..I know it sounds silly, but it still bugs me that I never could finish it…loved the game though!

I was going to suggest downloadstore.com , which for some reason still has a buyable download for Keen Dreams and a lot of other ancient softdisk stuff – whether or not they actually have the _right_ to sell it all is beyond me – but they definitely do not carry IIGS software.

Last week, I’ve started Dangerous Dave in Haunted Mansion – just to test DOSBox on my netbook – and was instantly hooked. I probably wasn’t very good at the game, so I had to leave the computer for the night to prevent losing my progress. But still haven’t finished it.

It’s interesting to look at the game now that Doom is out. You can certainly see the design elements which started in DD, like the shotgun with the invisible shot (as opposed to pellet-bullets), the flaming skull enemy, and the allure of showing parts of the level that you haven’t yet visited.

So, I’m very interested to know how you managed to create such a great game in just two months, and there’s also one peculiar question: everyone calls the knife-throwing enemy “the old lady”, but was it designed as such, or is it actually a hunchback?

And, about Anachronox: on Democratus, in the snow-covered city the name of which eludes me, the mayor looks like Vladimir Putin and some soldiers have the face of Boris Yeltsin. Is that intentional or am I imagining things.

But seriously what is id’s deal with the commander keen ip? are they just letting it go untouched? are they really just wishing it never happened? are they open to new ideas so that they can finally make some money again?

tom please bring back ROTT
i love rott and i wish i could play it on windows 7 the way it was in dos, but with a 3d graphics and 3d models, also maps editing should have an option to build floor over floor.
winrottgl is crap it does not feel the same as the original !!!

I don’t have much to say really, but I just wanted to look you up as I’ve just finished reading Masters Of Doom. Reading it brought back many memories of playing Keen and other early ID games, and it’s also been really interesting to find how the timeline you’ve got here relates to what I’ve just read. What you experienced, particularly moving from the Softdisk days and into the ID/Doom era must have been pretty tough, but at the same time almost like a fairytale.

Playing through Anachronox at the moment. A game I started but never got back to.. until now. Absolutely fantastic. Looking at the games you’ve had a hand in.. everything from Catacombs 3D to Deus Ex..I think you’ve played a part in every one of my favourite games.

Hi there, I was wondering, was there ever a level editor released for Catacomb? At the end of the game there is a mention of it being in “the first issue”. I would also like to know, do you still have all your Dangerous Dave GS stuff and would it be possible to release it? I’m sure that in it’s unfinished state there wouldn’t be much to see but it would be interesting nonetheless to take a look at. 🙂

Tom, are you doing any voice work on Deus Ex: Human Revolution? Sounds a bit like you in a gameplay trailer and I thought about how cool it would for you to be in this one too. Walton still kinda haunts me….some 10 years later. LOL. By the way, how is everything going post stroke? I hope you are doing great and back to normal, sir.

Wow, almost every game from the 90-97 is one I played at some point — waiting to download it from some BBS at 14.4baud heh. Oh those were the days, its cool that you also did work on Area 51, that game was pretty cool with the hidden areas by shooting out the windows. It also was cool because it wasnt cheating you by placing too many enemies on the screen at once so you got shot no matter what. Thanks for making such great games over the years, good luck with your new MMO!

Tom, heard about you through a story related to Anachronox. This probably won’t surprise you and you will probably have heard this enough to make it lose meaning, but that game is my all time favourite (and that’s coming from someone who generally can’t stand RPGs). The game was near perfect, from the art style, characters, voice acting, music/tone, and fantastic juxtaposition of beautifully witty and sarcastic humour and grand fantasy. Most games make overblown boasts about how ‘cinematic’ they are but Anachronox truly felt epic and like a journey by the time you completed it like you’d travelled with this strange band through their trials to all these unique and interesting worlds and were sad to see it end.

Anyway, it’s a masterpiece and you and every person who contributed should be proud of the incredible outcome of your labour. And you can take that compliment from a hard-to-please geezer who’s never bothered e-mailing a games designer before. Many thanks.

Hi there! Quick question that’s totally off topic. Do you know how to make your site mobile friendly? My website looks weird when viewing from my apple iphone. I’m trying to find a template or plugin that might be able to fix this problem. If you have any recommendations, please share. With thanks!

Do you know who currently owns the intellectual property rights to Commander Keen? Also, how much would it cost (assuming the old cute face and cup of coffee tricks don’t work) to get the rights back even if you do find out who has them?

I am the proud owner of every episode of Commander Keen and I must say to you WHY WAIT?! Get Keen 3d built and ready on a flash drive or something so when the day comes that ID lets Commander Keen have a Duke Nukem Forever moment, it can be released in moments!!! PLEASE! Dont let this fantastic character die!

Hello, Tom. Lifelong CK fan here. I was wondering if it would be possible to re-release the GBA version of Hyperspace Delivery Boy via the Nintendo 3DS’ eShop service (which allows users to purchase legacy Gameboy titles). I never had a chance to play this back in the day, and from my understanding, received very little fanfare and was scarcely available. Assuming that you basically own the rights to the game, distribution costs would be virtually nonexistent (plus, you wouldn’t need to reprogram anything), and really, the only substantial fees that would be involved would be to classify the game for whichever territories you’d choose to release the game in (Australian here).

I know that the likelihood is very low, but I really hope that you’d consider it. =)

I lost 2 men on level 195 when those dang 57 chevys start firing like crazy out of nowhere!

ThatTomHall

December 5, 2011 at 5:32 am

I actually made that game cuz all shoot-em-ups have bullets going at crazy angles and I die all the time, so that one had enemy bullets going straight down only, heh.

tomhodgins

December 5, 2011 at 7:36 am

Hey Tom, I think I’ll just leave this here because this is as good a place as any.

I’m a graphic designer also named ‘Tom’, and have always been a game lover. A few years ago managed to combine those two loves, by contributing to a popular open-source FPS game when it was just starting. I’ve certainly caught the ‘game-development bug’ from that, so I know we have that shared experience.

I’m looking back now, trying to recognize the artistry and cleverness in the games I have loved, and understanding the people who made them. I’ve really enjoyed reading this blog, and seeing how human and real you are, instead of just a recurring name in game credits. I’m so honoured that we live in a culture where the technology for me to reach out to your on your personal blog exists – when I was younger I never imagined strangers having this sort of closeness. I just wanted to let you know how much your games have meant to me, and I want you to know that I’m following your blog now so I’ll be looking forward to seeing where you are take video games in the future!

It’s nice to meet, you and I’ll be keeping an eye on your next move (now I’m curious about this MMO that’s coming).

I heard somewhere that if someone doesn’t use their intellectual property rights to something after a certain amount of time (5 years iirc), they lose those rights. Is that true? If so, wouldn’t that mean you’d be able to bring back Commander Keen whenever you want, and recreate the rights as your own for free?

Mr. Hall, I purchased and downloaded Anachronox from GOG.com a few weeks ago. It was on sale, and it was an RPG (I kinda have a thing for those…an all-consuming, obsessive thing), and the premise sounded neat. While it did seem to start out slow, I came to really enjoy it. I just finished it tonight, and read on Wikipedia that you still hold out some hope of getting a chance to make a sequel. I’d just like to say that I really, really hope you will do your very best to make that sequel happen; Anachronox is engaging, hilarious, and surprisingly thoughtful. I’ll be satisfied in 8 years’ time with a written version of what was meant to happen, but I do hope that it won’t come to that, and that we’ll some day see Anachronox 2. Here’s hoping. It says a good deal about a game that it can acquire new fans over a decade after its release.

HI Tom,
I sincerely hope this isn’t a massive faux pas…
I know you said id looks un-enthusiastically on fan projects and there has been more than a little discussion with regard to intellectual property law where such endeavors are concerned, and your point about originality is a good one. Having said that, when I was 8 or 9 I was so busy imagining myself as Commander Keen that inventing a character to transcend him seemed like utter Hubris. Many people were able to take CK as a leaping off point into the rest of the gaming world, but (and I’m dead serious) nothing since has ever measured up. Commander Keen remains the standard by which all other games are measured.
I’ve generally regarded the fan projects with tepid enthusiasm as well. There are some thoroughly composed mods and some thoroughly amateurish fan-games from scratch. They disappear into the shadow of their progenitor– every one of them. This one is different, and while the creator isn’t charging for it, I still hope he isn’t sued. Commander Keen: Heroes Lost is an RPG created in the GCS platform Megazeux. Doesn’t try to compete with it’s predecessors, but rather takes the characters and settings to a totally different place. http://vault.digitalmzx.net/show.php?id=1986 . you have to download Megazeux itself to play, but its right there on the same site, free and for any OS. Totally worth looking at for anyone who begged for a pogo stick for Christmas as a kid or feels a nostalgic pang at the mention of my (and many of our) childhood hero.

Going through your list, I noticed Terminal Velocity. I knew about your Softdisk and ID days, but didn’t realize you were in the ROT and TV projects.

Rocket Jumping in ROT and killing endless hours in TV while I was in the boondocks, the game gave my brothers and I something to do and a way to chase each other around constantly all from the comfort of my computer warmed room.